


Thai, Game, Beginning

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 04:49:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11328933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Scully has a little fun teasing Mulder and Skinner.





	Thai, Game, Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

Thai, Game, Beginning by Anna (A. Leigh-Anne Childe)

Tue, 03 Mar 1998  
Thai, Game, Beginning  
By Anna (A. Leigh-Anne Childe)   
Whimsical piece that floated into my head this morning. M/Sk. Archive MSSS, elsewhere by permission. If these aren't my clones, I guess they aren't my personal property either, but I can live with that. 

* * *

Dana Scully walks into the office alongside Mulder and sits down with him in front of Walter Skinner's desk. The morning light shines brightly through the window, washing out her pale face. Both men, before collecting themselves to get started, are drawn to look at her with gauging eyes. 

"Agent Scully, are you--" Skinner hesitates, makes a show of glancing at his watch. "There's no reason we can't reschedule this meeting for later in the day." As Scully squints against the light at him he seems to realize the blinds are wide open, and gets up to slant them down.

"I'm fine sir." She blinks, adjusting to the redirected light, and nods with an aloof amiability, polite, undemonstrative, her specialty for meetings and mornings. Inside she is feeling secretly frisky, itchy with a need to broadcast her tumbling thoughts, which would surely startle the two men to no end. 

The meeting proceeds--not a long one, for a change. Mulder does most of the talking, and Dana is aware that both he and Skinner have subtly engineered the distribution of talk, complicit in allowing her to sit quietly. Do they have any idea she is zoning out almost completely on the recap of case highlights? Even Mulder's sprightly assessment of the whole trained-spider element to the case--the poison delivery system, he calls it--fails to drag her into alertness. She only feels a mild queasy twinge as she thinks of the spiders again. Spiders. She suddenly shudders; it's a very real, physical shudder, rising from its deep deposit of nerves, the product of a mind screaming "Arghhhh!" to itself as it finds a spider in its hair. Never, again, Mulder, she thinks. Next time, you're on your own. 

The men have noticed her shudder and fallen silent. It takes Dana a moment to catch up. She blinks, quirks a brow with a rather jaunty tilt that the men seem to find bewildering. "Sorry? Sir?" She glances between them.

Skinner clears his throat, plays with a pencil. Dana has the very real impression he his about to suggest a vacation. She readjusts herself in her chair. "Sorry, sir," she repeats. And then, though she'd meant not to say it (she'd *meant* not to say it, hadn't she?) she blurts: "I had a precognitive dream this morning." Appalled at herself, she snaps her mouth shut. Mulder is boggling wordlessly at her. She flicks him a smooth glance, then returns her gaze to Skinner, as if this were somehow part of the debriefing. As if.

Skinner clears his throat again, a small flat little sound like a lion preparing for oratory. "Well, I guess. . .you're entitled." He projects a subtle sense of smirking while in no way actually doing so, while Mulder pulls himself up in his seat slightly as if unsure whether to be, by implication, affronted. 

There is a little pause, then Mulder says, quite earnestly and helpfully--Dana tries not to laugh--"Is this relevant to the case?"

"Oh, no." She twitches, smooths her skirt, looks up to see the men looking undecided between annoyance and amusement. Or perhaps *bemusement*. "It was about the two of you," she says, rolling the words off her tongue, unable to entirely swallow the bubbling of laughter that is threatening her throat. 

They look at her blankly, quizzically, then look at each other, exchanging a very clear invisible shrug between them with only their eyes. 

"Is this *important*, Agent Scully?" Skinner asks, beginning to get that subdued, silken tone to his voice that almost always preceded a shift to scathing, however gentle. 

"Well, actually--" Pausing thoughtfully, she realizes to her surprise that it is. "Yes, I think it is. . .sir." Her lips twitch slightly. Precognitive dreams. Her mother would be so proud. Her sister--her tumultuous humor cools a little, just for a moment. Ah well. 

"Uh, Scully." Mulder jiggles his legs, fiddles a bit with his long fingers, but is obviously trying to keep the impatience from his voice. "I don't think Assistant Director Skinner is really interested in conducting you in catechism."

Dana wants to smack him. Does everyone, at some point or another, want to smack Mulder? She has to admit, though, that his point is valid; Skinner, rather than rebuking Mulder's words, seems more inclined to bear them out with his own faint impatience. Well, they'll get what's coming to them, she thinks with satisfaction. 

"I'm not really sure I should go into it here. Can we be sure this office isn't still bugged?" She allows a light unmistakable emphasis to rest on the word 'still' and watches as Skinner flushes a bit, embarrassed by old manipulations--not so much his own as others'. He hates looking the fool. Despite this he is never afraid to face facts.

"Probably best not to assume," he admits bluntly. 

Then again, thinks Dana, perhaps he's just trying to avoid her revelations. "We could meet somewhere for lunch," she suggests, with so much bland casualness that it takes a moment or two her words to impact on the men.

"Lunch?" Mulder says, radiating astonishment at her, as if she'd suggested cannibalism. 

Skinner frowns--the wattage does not quite equate to a glare. "I'm *busy*, Agent Scully." His voice is terse, dismissive, but his face holds a hint of puzzlement under its crust of impatience. 

"I think you should both hear this." Dana's tongue curls in her mouth. She can almost taste unmelted butter. She does not, however, smile. . .exactly.

Now Skinner is beginning to look suspicious. "If this is some kind of set-up--" He pauses, brow furrowing, eyes narrowing to something just short of menacing her. "If someone has the mistaken idea that this is my birthday, or if you're trying to shoehorn me into showing up for some kind of roast--" His gaze slews pointedly to Mulder, who jerks to attention.

"Hey, don't look at me." Defensive, almost flustered voice.

Something in the byplay triggers Dana's dormant, long-simmering giggles and they begin to escape her as a seep of muffled, hissing peeps, sounds that would have horrified her at any other given time. The men stare at her. She gasps and smothers a hiccup. "I'm fine," she says. Lightly brimming tears stand out in her eyes, wet her lashes. She touches a hand to her hair, attempting to look nonchalant. 

Skinner looks unreassured--if anything, more suspicious. Mulder looks put out and pouty, as if beginning to suspect he's been left out of a joke. 

After a long moment of sizing her up, Skinner abruptly gives in (masking his surrender in a facade of noblesse oblige), says, "I can get away for a few minutes. Grab a hotdog from the vendor. I don't have time for anything else."

"Well, yeah, but--" Mulder sounds reluctant, but compelled to point out: "If we're really worried about someone overhearing this grand message, there's always the possibility of directional mikes." He seems faintly apologetic after speaking. 

Dana's giggles threaten again, but she says with successful expressionlessness, "We could drop in for a minute at Fazio's." She raises a brow at Skinner.

"Fine," Skinner says, as if settling the matter. "One o'clock."

Now Mulder is the one frowning. "It'll be crowded as hell," he points out. "Lunchtime. Packed like a yuppie sardine tin."

"One o'clock, Mulder," Skinner says.

"Hold on a minute--hold on--" Mulder straightens in his chair, his glance darting between Skinner and Scully.

Oh, the paranoia is surfacing, Dana realizes with muted glee.

Mulder's face has set into a parody of internal calculations. "It's not *my* birthday," he says. He gazes thoughtfully at Skinner, who in return looks outraged, disgusted.

"Are you in on this?" Mulder asks, point-blank.

"Agent Mulder--Agent *Scully*--"

But Scully has lapsed again. She feels exactly like the Catholic schoolgirl she once was, tickled by her own perverse mischief. A blurt of laughter nearly chokes her; there is no way to disguise this as a cough. She begins to laugh, then has to cover her mouth with the tips of her fingers. Just a cough, she thinks, trying to adopt this demeanor. Just a woman with a slight cough. 

The men have begun to look positively outraged, incensed. She has them hooked now, no doubt about it. "Why don't we make this later in the day," she says, catching them off guard with a smooth, sudden switch into vanilla professionalism. "I'll be in Quantico most of the day anyway. I have a lot of bodies to cut up." Chop, chop, she thinks, her face placid and cool. She glances at her watch, mercilessly composed. "How about Gilligan's--seven?"

Helplessly, Mulder shrugs. "Your party, Scully."

Skinner makes a face he probably isn't aware of making, sighs noisily. But the discussion and juggling of schedules has diverted him neatly from the actual absurdity--the *point* of the meeting. He is used to this, the ritual of group consultations, day-planner comparisons. In fact, he is looking through his day-planner now. "Fine. I can do that."

The meeting winds up; Mulder and Scully stand. Skinner, surprisingly, stands also, and more or less follows them to the far door that opens on the hallway. Dana leaves first, slipping out before any more laughter can jeopardize her mission. Mulder watches her walk down the hall, as does Skinner. Skinner looks at Mulder, pinning him with dangerous eyes and mutters, "If you know what this is about--"

"I don't have a *clue*." He holds up his hand, makes a boy scout oath sign, then looks sadly down the hall after his partner. "I think she's finally flipped. It's my fault. Spookiness is contagious." 

"And not covered under major medical," Skinner says grouchily, closing the door on him.

***

Both Skinner and Mulder show up nearly at the same time and find a table. The bar is dense with members of federal law enforcement, congressional aides, and lower political animals. They have to push their way through the evening crowd when a table begins to vacate; Skinner's hard face and tall body part the crowds like a knife, and a small group of flashy lawyers who'd also been converging on the empty seats notice his cool approach and suddenly reconsider, melting away and yielding him the prize.

They sit on either side of the scarred barrier and order drinks and wait with variable degrees of irritation for Scully, making small talk while they do. Both, without realizing the mirrored nature of their actions, suspiciously scan the bar's thick crowds on a regular basis, as if fearing to see its members cohere suddenly into a chorus of congratulatory song.

At seven-fifteen, Scully arrives, weaving her way briskly to them. Mulder moves over on his bench, but instead of sitting next to him she pulls up a chair from a nearby table, with consummate seat-stealing skill, and perches at the end of their own table, partially blocking the aisle.

Mulder is wearing a dry face. "You're blocking the aisle," he says rather brattily, before taking a swig of his beer.

"I can't stay. I had another body come in that needs to be expedited tonight. I just came up to drop in at my apartment and stop by here."

Skinner looks very displeased. "They can't work you into the small hours, Agent Scully. I can call the--"

"That's not necessary, sir." Dana interrupts him, her voice unmoved but firm. She does drop a glance at her watch though, thinking tiredly of the hours to come. This isn't what she had planned, but it will have to do. She waves off the waitress offering to take her order, and then gives the men a faint, arch look. They are wearing twin expressions, and to Dana's eye resemble a couple of nervous horses bracing uneasily for bad weather. She thinks: Dana Katherine, you really should *not*. . . .

"If you could expedite *this*, Agent Scully, I would appreciate it." 

"No kidding," Mulder carps, popping a peanut into his mouth. "There's a Knicks game coming on." 

Fine, Dana thinks. "Well, this is more important." She looks down demurely. "A very important day for you. A kind of--" She pauses, thoughtfully rolls the word on her tongue. "--kind of an anniversary."

Mulder immediately looks over his shoulder, expecting to see a group of people hanging over the side of the booth, about to break into song.

"Anniversary?" Skinner frowns.

"I had a dream." (Mulder rolls her eyes. Dana sees but ignores him.) "I don't usually put much stock in oneiromancy, but I've always been told it runs in our family, on my mother's side. I've never really had one I found credible. . .until now." She gives them an innocent look.

"You had a dream about--" Mulder hesitates. "This isn't one of those you-will-be-hit-by-a-bus dreams, is it, Scully?" He darts a small look at Skinner under half-lowered eyelids, and Dana receives the distinct impression he is apologizing for her. 

She would be irritated under other circumstances, but the content of her message tends to make her feel more smirky than not. "No. It isn't. I don't--" She hesitates. She has been riding on her own vast amusement, but she doesn't usually do things like this. Decorum is kicking in. How impertinent of her, how inappropriate--how on earth can she be thinking of telling Skinner. . .this? "I don't know if I really should tell you," she begins.

"Scully!" Mulder barks, aghast, loud enough that a few heads turn. He lowers his voice, ducks down a bit to glare at her. "I've been shooting darts at a slide of you all day. You don't want to toy with me any further."

She tries to pull herself into a semblance of dignified self-possession, to communicate that whatever threats might be issued, this is of course entirely her decision. . .she caves. Not without some malicious pleasure. "Well, if you really want to know. . .I had a dream that you and Skinner were married." She gives her watch a glance. "October thirteenth. I guess that means that a year from now--" She tries not to smirk, fails. Her smooth face curls a bit around the lips. "I don't rule out the likelihood, of course, that this is just a figurative state of--of matrimonial bliss." Can she continue speaking levelly for much longer, she wonders. Mulder's and Skinner's faces are identically blank, their brows equally furrowed. They look at her, then one another. They obviously don't get it.

She stands. "I really do have to go--"

"Hold on a minute--"

"Agent Scul--"

Mulder overrides Skinner, grabs her arm, perhaps more strongly than he intends. "What do you mean, *married*? To who--whom?" His eyes say: don't you dare tell me--

"To each other, of course. What did you think I meant?" It's a good line to exit on, and she takes advantage of Mulder's blown-over shock to remove her arm and dart off. "Good night, sir. See you tomorrow, Mulder." She decamps at top speed. Really, this was very naughty. She's going to regret this immeasurably. Skinner--her supervisor--well, if you want to get technical, even *Mulder* is her supervisor, head of the department. . .oh to hell with it. She feels righteous. Precognitive dreams, indeed. Having discharged the content of the dream, she can now dismiss it as she's been wanting to do. It has nothing to do with *her*, after all. How dare they come and have a dream in her head, while she's trying to get a good night's sleep? It's practically a violation of her rational mind. She feels only relief and peaceable contentment as she gets in her car and drives off. By the time she reaches the expressway she is thinking fondly of her cadaver.

***

"I'm really sorry, sir. I don't--I don't know where this came from."

"Don't you?" Skinner was nearly glaring at him, irked and surly.

"Hey, don't look at *me*!" Mulder's mouth dropped open slightly. 

"You're *definitely* contagious," Skinner opined.

Mulder scowled, gaze drifting to the invisible wake of Scully's departure. "I bet if we checked her stomach contents, we'd discover fermenting pizza. Some weird mushroom is responsible, I'll bet money on it."

"That's not your usual credulity speaking."

Mulder gave him a wounded look. "Thanks a lot," he said, and then his eyes glinted. "Besides, if I believed in her dream--"

"Yeah," Skinner agreed, sounding completely understanding and vaguely disgusted.

"It's a well known phenomenon that people, on hearing their fortunes told, will either act to fulfill a prediction or to evade it." Mulder ate a few peanuts, absently. "By telling us, she's almost guaranteed an invalidation of the prediction."

Skinner nodded, then frowned. "That's a moot point, Mulder. It wouldn't have come true regardless." And then, with a double-take, "*Almost*?"

Mulder grinned cheekily. "Oh come on, you never know. A few drinks at the Christmas party, some spilled fruit punch, a little fumbling in the executive washroom--"

Skinner looked torn between horror and--Mulder thought--perverse amusement. "Dream on, Agent Mulder." His body had pulled itself up slightly, with a hint of masculine affront. "It's not gonna happen."

"It's more fun than getting hit by a bus." Mulder continued to grin a little.

"How would you know?" Skinner retorted.

"Uh--" Mulder's lips parted, then snapped shut. After a moment during which his cheeks turned a faint pink, he cleared his throat. "Don't ask, don't tell. . .sir."

Skinner blinked. "Oh." He looked away from Mulder, out into the bar, though his eyes were not really focused on anything there. It was an instinctive negatory gesture that Mulder always thought of as his "going gruff" response. 

There was a silence, complicated and filled with inchoate movements as each man tried in himself to regain a facade of professional normality, an attempt that failed when, as one, their eyes lifted and locked. They'd both been about to speak, but their breaths sighed in a conspiracy of resignation; both recognized the pointlessness of it. Both smiled slightly. There was no way they would fulfill Scully's prophecy--come together under her oblique watchful eye, with the threat of smirks always hovering over them. No. Not a chance.

Mulder glanced at his watch: that ever-present, ever-normalizing gesture of checking in with the passage of time, that shakes out the rumpled chaos of social situations and irons it back into order. "Knicks are on." Regret colored his observation. "I hate missing the beginning."

"Is it that late?" Despite the question, Skinner sounded unsurprised and resigned. Late evenings. When, after all, did he ever get home before eight? 

"Wanna come over and watch the game?" Mulder's eyes caught Skinner's again, twinkled mischievously.

"I think *not*," Skinner said dryly as they stood and gathered into their coats and dug for wallets.

"I've got Rolling Rock."

"Does that ever get you any dates?" Skinner snorted. They paid and worked through the still crowded floor until they reached the chilly evening air. Almost simultaneously they both turned up their collars, breaths steaming into the street.

"So you probably have a lot of work to do tonight," Mulder said. For some reason they were still both standing outside the bar's bright doors, hands in pockets, bodies shifting in place.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, me too."

Skinner gave him a skeptical glance, then drifted his look to contemplate the plate glass window of the bar. He seemed to be chewing on something. Peanut, decided Mulder, who had snagged and shoved a handful into his own coat pocket. 

"It's late," Skinner said, distractedly.

Mulder began to harbor an existentialist, waiting-for-Godot kind of feeling. "Not that late."

Skinner brooded, thinking of things he apparently didn't care to express. "It's not really necessary for us to make a point of defying the prophecy," he noted at last.

"Oh, I agree with you absolutely," Mulder said easily.

"But then again, we shouldn't have to feel that every action or word from now on has any bearing on--on--" Skinner waved his hand in a vague direction that seemed to indicate, shortly but sweepingly, the lingering trails of Scully and her words. He looked irritable, or as if he were trying to be.

"Exactly," Mulder said.

Skinner nodded. "You can't live worrying about whether or not everything you say or do might fulfill a prediction--"

"Whether you're going to die at fifty-three because your father did," Mulder finished for him.

Skinner blinked, wondering if Mulder thought he were fifty-three and if he'd somehow picked up misinformation about how his father had died, which had certainly not been of a heart attack, but then he nodded again. "Exactly."

"There's this great Mexican delivery place I like to order from," Mulder said, as they began walking toward the parking lot.

"I can't eat Mexican," Skinner said. As they disappeared and the ripples of their voices thinned and spread out on the air, words floated up toward the stars like the cryptic abbreviation of a message: "Thai. . .game. ..beginning. . ."

*

End.


End file.
